Davis Dozen Petition

Drop the charges against the Davis Bankers Dozen and stop the criminalization of political dissent at UC Davis!

In the aftermath of the success of the US Bank blockade at UC Davis, twelve students and faculty received letters from the Yolo County District Attorney ordering them to appear on over 20 counts of misdemeanor charges each. Demonstrators at UC Berkeley received similar letters four months after the November 9th demonstrations, where police officers beat students for protesting the state of public education.

This pattern of retroactive repression is the administration’s newest tool to avoid the backlash and negative media attention that followed the infamous pepper spray incident of November 18th. This approach seeks not only to punish specific demonstrators but also to send a clear message to all university students: If you protest, we will prosecute; speak out and you will be silenced. Send a message that this repression will not be tolerated! Demand that the Yolo County District Attorney and the Office of the Chancellor drop charges against the Bankers Dozen!

The Bankers Dozen are set to appear at Yolo County Superior Court on Friday, April 27th at 8:30am. We are hoping to pack the courtroom with supporters and flood the DA and Chancellor with phone calls and letters demanding that the charges be dropped.

You can also help by making a donation to help cover legal fees and circulating the link for the donation page. Every little bit helps!

In the wake of the closure of the US Bank branch in the Memorial Student Union, 11 UC Davis students and one professor received criminal charges for their participation in peaceful political protests. If convicted, the protesters could face up to 11 years each in prison, and $1 million in damages.

These charges were brought at the express request of the UC Davis administration, weeks after the conclusion of peaceful protests they had consistently permitted to occur. This same administration's treatment of political protest as a criminal matter in November resulted in UCD police infamously pepper spraying seated students in the face. With the release of the Reynoso Task Force Report, it is now a matter of public record that this unconscionably brutal act was knowingly authorized without any legal basis. Now the physical harm inflicted by police at the administration's behest last fall finds its corollary in criminal charges brought against students and faculty this spring, in an injudicious attempt to damage the lives of protesters—many of whom are the same students pepper sprayed in November, and are plaintiffs in a pending ACLU lawsuit against the University. This administration has established a record, verified both by skeptical and sympathetic reports, of extraordinary incompetence regarding legal issues pertaining to political protest by University members.

We, the undersigned, call upon the UC Davis administration to solicit the immediate withdrawal of all criminal charges against students and professors. We deplore the willful abuse of university members that the administration is continuing to perpetrate in its haste to repress and criminalize political protest, and we demand that the administration do everything in its power to see these charges dismissed before more lives are harmed.